Exercise: Editorial Illustration

Looking for examples of illustration in editorials I found cartoons in newspapers, medical magazines often use an illustration on the cover, money magazines and the richest source was a womens’ health magazine.

Cartoons in newspapers are satirical, usually using metaphors to convey meaning but using a representational style.

None of the images I found were truly abstract, most of them were a mixture of representational and diagrammatic. Most of them served a decorative function as well as being informational at the same time. The images in the money magazines were often conceptual, as you would imagine in trying to convey abstract financial concepts.

“Loves me, loves me not”.

I have a book “Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s” edited by Ryan Hughes. It is full of images by wonderful illustrators such as Herb Tauss andBernie Fuchs. This title seemed an opportunity to do my own version of these sort of images. The ones I particularly like are very stylised, with restricted palettes and strong images.

Initial ideas

I wrote a few paragraphs of a Mills and Boon type story from that era and established some key words

Love

confusion

longing

irritation

efficiency versus chaos

all not well underneath.

I knew that these illustrators worked by setting up situations with real life models which they then painted from. I tried out a few ideas using a large teddybear in a wig and a pair of tights. It was not ideal so I recruited my sister in law to model instead. I set up some props which were consistent with the story, a coffee pot, newspaper, a letter, a bunch of flowers and then took a series of photographs in different settings and poses

ideas using teddy

some of ideas with model

VISUALS

I selected 3 of the poses which worked best and tried out a series of colour combinations.

Finally, I decided to work them up using a technique I had tried in a previous exercise, drawing on cloth, masking using wax and staining with ink. Overall I was only moderately pleased with the end result. I think part of the problem was that of high expectations. I loved the style of images in the book so much, obviously it is not so easy to reproduce them. I would like to have another go in the future, maybe refining my technique or trying a different medium.